So, with a camera which needed a re-charged battery and clothes which needed drying out, we went back to the hotel, had a quick change and then back out to the Cloth Hall museum in the main square. It is hard to believe that Ieper was totally destroyed during the war years and that all the beautiful and apparently ancient buildings are, in fact, reconstructions. The Cloth Hall is magnificent and testimony to the people of Belgium that they weren't prepared to put up with some modern replacement of this beautiful town but wanted it back to how it had once been.
Sorry, no photographs - it was another of those occasions when I just wanted to take it all in and by now the afternoon was rapidly disappearing, so we took this last couple of hours to go around at our own pace. On arriving at the museum, we were each given a small card with a name and bar code on it and at intervals around the museum, there were computers which, when the card was inserted, gave a detailed history of the person on the card and how they spent the war. I was a woman who had already emigrated to America before the outbreak of war but who came back, with her brothers, to serve her country. She survived and went back to America where she lived to a ripe old age. My partner's character was not so happy. He served throughout the war years and died, weeks before the end of the conflict.
This was a museum which needs re-visiting. The exhibits were wonderful and terrible. The sound effects were truly terrifying, especially the shell which exploded as I was quietly reading some piece of information. One was enough for me - how every one of those poor men didn't suffer shell-shock is an absolute mystery.
At another point, I was looking at another exhibit when I became aware of the fact that I was reciting, along with the audio-visual display behind me, one of Wilfred Owen's war poems. I studied these for A level English, a very long time ago and was amazed to find that this particular poem was still very firmly in my head. Although his writing style never appealed to me ( too much use of alliteration for me), the subject matter was always one which I found compelling, even as a shallow, self-obsessed teenager.
So that is the end of the second day. Mercifully, we didn't have to eat in the ludicrously expensive restaurant again as the little bistro by the Menin Gate was open. If you are going to Ieper and want a simple but very well prepared meal, at a sensible price, can I recommend Poppies, which in spite of its touristy name proved to be more than acceptable.
I'm not sure when I will get to posting Day 3 - I have a very busy weekend ahead of me. But if your photograph hasn't appeared yet, don't panic - it will be here eventually.
